


Earworms

by Somecallmemichelle



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, F/F, Fluff, Music, No Despair, Shipping, cuteness, earworms, female chihiro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-13
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-07-11 22:43:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15982049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Somecallmemichelle/pseuds/Somecallmemichelle
Summary: Where Chihiro hums some of the songs she has heard from Sayaka, and Sayaka takes notice.





	Earworms

The girl was quiet, as she usually was. Hair tucked just the right amount to hide her eyes from view, yet not to impede her vision, arms hung slightly of the long, flowing dress. If one were to look they would likely not see the figure, as it hunched over a source of light. A laptop. Chihiro’s thin lips were pressed in what could be considered a smile, the tip of her tongue visible, yet not lolling. It was her natural state. She had thought to have heard something in a philosophy class about that. About returning to the most basic and primal of forms. About forgetting everyone and everything else. And that was what she tried to do.   
  
The screen in front of her brought her a calm and reassurance that nothing else could. Fingers typing away, just fast enough to be a blur, slow enough not to make too much of a clickety clack sound.If statements and logic based questions were solved rather easily, and she focused on nothing else. It was a reprieve from the real world. She found that the images of text and code filled her eyes, making her oblivious to the world around her. In those few moments she was content. 

  
It was impossible for her to be bored, or for life's problems to get in her way when she was at her laptop. She had many of those, all of which were synced through the cloud, pending manual approval of course. No use in letting a virus ruin her work. But most virus cowered before Chihiro, who disassembled them and cracked open their code. No virus had ever worked its way through the components of her computer, unless it was safely isolated in a virtual box and analysed. She was careful.

  
Of course Chihiro didn’t spend her entire life coding, for there were those brief periods where compiling happened, and she had to find a distraction herself. In those brief moments Chihiro enjoyed browsing videos and watching the ridicule. The weird, the obtuse, the obscure. She enjoyed, in other words, online video platforms.   
  
She was on a real bend. Coding brought her satisfaction, it brought her a  _ purpose _ , but then it was in the distractions, in the obtusely not necessary that she found herself relaxing. Coding came easy to her, but it still required her attention. When watching her videos she could lose focus and not lose anything of vital importance. She could pay it as much attention as she deemed it worthy. That was why it was called a distraction, a hobby and - though she always had an eye on the progress bar for any errors that might show up on her compiling, she held no such reserves to the videos.

 

Sometimes something did catch her attention though.   
  
It started innocently enough, Chihiro had devised the ultimate playlist - through programming of course. But it took in a series of increasingly complex factors to devise a series of videos for her to watch. It was groundbreaking code, applied to the mundane. But so was Chihiro a genius programmer. 

 

The girl looked somewhat familiar to Chihiro but, busy as she was with her drink, she didn’t quite grasp who she was at first. With her long sessions, eyes glued to the computer screen, fingers rapidly typing away, she didn’t get a chance to drink. She didn’t get it when relaxing either, as, as she realised who exactly sat on her screen, she spat it out, straight into the screen.

 

It wasn’t the first time such an event had happened and she had taken precautions, but that little did to diminish her annoyance. The liquid dribbled down from the screen, leaving no mark as she had earlier placed a screen protector. The stains it left did little to dispel the recognition flying through Chihiro’s face, however.

 

Sayaka Maizono. Chihiro had known her to sing, who hadn’t known it? She was very vocal about it, however she hadn’t exactly known that Sayaka shared her talents online. Not that Chihiro had a problem with that, one of her most profitable side jobs involved the web, but still, Chihiro couldn’t help but listen as the first notes came out her lips.    
  
The weird part was, once the first note hit she was hooked. The song ends, and then another one starts and before she was aware of it she had consumed every video on the channel. Chihiro didn’t know if this was her program’s way of telling her she needed that, or if the program had out predicted even her but it had felt remarkably nice. Even if it had, perhaps for the first time distracted her from the progress bar on her code.    
  
Luckily Chihiro had been fairly certain that it was error, and bug free, no unexpected error on line 33 or 330 for that matter, so it had compiled correctly. However important to her code was, Sayaka’s singing took precedence on her mind. It was the weirdest of feelings not to worry. She barely glanced at the finished program before storing it. Her pale, rounded cheeks, puffed as she stored it in one of her many laptops.   
  
Chihiro was a stranger to whatever concept that had taken her in at that moment. She idly moved her fingers over the keyboard, thoughts of code to program still in her mind. Perhaps for the first time ever she did not type. She’d have time for that later. How many sleepless nights had she had, just her and her computer screen? Chihiro didn’t know how she looked, but she imagined the bags under her eyes, from the last time she had headed out, were still visible. Shivers ran down her spine as she happened to catch a glance of herself in one of the screens. Though she had turned the cameras away from her direction, and the screens didn’t really reflect all that well she could see it.   
  
She was a mess. Pushing a hand to her hair - had it always been that oily? She sighed. She was starting to see why Mondo and Ishimaru always tried getting her out of her room and into the streets. Somethin she rarely did, even when Ishimaru paid for lunch.    
  
Chihiro had never thought she’d start seeing sense in what Mondo said. She hadn’t thought that day to come, and yet there it was.  Shaking her head, she did something she had never done before, she turned of her computer.   
  
Even when she had gone out with Mondo and Ishimaru, happily dating, happy together, she hadn’t turned it off. She had enough cooling power to let it turned on for whatever amount of time she deemed necessary. At that moment however, she decided that enough was enough. As she headed to bed - rest a much needed thing. - she worried not about code, or it, but instead sing sang a familiar tune, one she had heard being sung by Sayaka. It followed her on to her dreams. Dreams that usually so bland, if they were even existent, for she couldn’t recall them, became vivid.

 

Chihiro had to admit something. She admired the singing skills of the other girl and, perhaps, a bit more than that.

 

_____

  
  


It happened more by accident than by any true desire of Chihiro’s part. Though she did her best to ignore Sayaka, she couldn’t help but steal glances ever so often. She, distressingly enough, also couldn’t help but have the tunes that the other girl had sung stuck in her mind.   
  
It was not as if they had entirely filled her head, for what had been in her mind before,  code and statements and ideas for bold new programs, was still there. She hadn’t lost the ability to think of a dashing solution to a compiling error. She hadn’t even lost her finger speed. Those were skills she had cultivated long ago and which were as much a part of her, as her shy disposition. However it was as if her mind had expanded, or rather, what had once been her obsession had stepped back to give room to something else.   
  
It was a real earworm of a song. Or rather a list of songs, as she had listened to them all. Not only that she had found herself putting them on her tiny earbuds as she worked. She could recite  them from memory and sing the chorus before the part arrived.   
  
And yet despite all that she tried not to reveal her new interest in front of Sayaka. Not because she was afraid the other girl wouldn’t like it, but because she was afraid she would like it. It was a dumb fear. But while she could tell herself that what she enjoyed was the music, if the other girl were to share the excitement she had for music with her, on a personal basis, then Chihiro would have to admit to some stuff she really didn’t want to admit. It was a tough dilema.

 

And even so, though she tried her best, sometimes Chihiro did hum the music. It was so catchy she couldn’t help herself. And though she mostly did it when she was alone, checking to see if she truly was, there were times where she got careless. For she didn’t sing them only at home, the home to which Mondo had the key. No, she truly didn’t want to be discovered humming the music. From questions about where she had heard it - That she perhaps would be able to dodge with a vague, “the internet”, to the people who might recognise it.

Top of that list of people who might very well recognise it was Sayaka. She had composed them and, the fews she hadn’t composed she had covered. How could she not? And Chihiro, well Chihiro really did want to avoid the problems that would come from it. While she doubted she’d have to pay copyright fees, as any good musician enjoyed sharing the music, she’d probably make a big deal out of it.

  
Chihiro had been counting on one thing, and one thing alone. Though she was somewhat restrained, the other girl, Sayaka still made a big show out her appearance. She was hard to miss, not all that discreet in the long run of things. She was flashy, enjoyed being seen.   
  
And while some of that lack of discretion had somewhat disappeared over time, Chihiro truly counted her lucky stars that she still announced her presence loudly, because it left her no chance of being caught, especially when she only sang in abandoned localizations.    
  
What Chihiro had forgotten, however, was the sly nature of pop-stars. Sometimes they had to blend in, that if they wished not to be assaulted by fans. And while Sayaka wasn’t the biggest star it was a skill she had learned. So Chihiro was understandably startled when her soft humming was stopped by a voice from behind her.    
  
“I knew it! I thought I’d heard it before!”, Chihiro gulped, and she dropped whatever device she was carrying. She thought it to be a smartphone? It was hard to remember with Sayaka so close to her.   
  
“I ...hum, it was nothing!” - her eyes darted left and right, and Chihiro was plenty aware that she was being conspicuous. Or was she not? She had never really learned the meaning of the word. Either way she wasn’t being very subtle.   
  
“Nothing? You were humming! My songs, how can that be nothing?”, and Chihiro said nothing, unsure of herself, because really it means something, doesn’t it?”, Sayaka’s eyes glowed and Chihiro enjoyed that, before she pushed her head away.    
  
“I mean…-” Chihiro said nothing. What could she say, she had been busted, caught, any attempts at a denial would be easily countered!   
  


“Don’t be like that!”, Sayaka smiled. “I’ve always said dreams were, or rather, are worth following!”, the girl came so close to Chihiro she could practically feel her breath. It tickled her nose, it was sort of nice. And Chihiro couldn’t help but inhale her scent. Clean, and very much appealing. Nothing like the smell of her room when she went on a coding manic spree, which she hadn’t done in a while.

  
“That’s true, but…”, Sayaka was intense, and Chihiro found her energy simply tiresome. At the same time though, Chihiro couldn’t help herself - she loved it. If Chihiro’s bounds of energy were limited to her fingers, typing away code, then Sayaka’s were different. She seemed to spring up, her whole body filled with energy.   
  
“Besides...if you sing, I might do one of my bad things, and kiss you”, Chihiro blinked. She could not see how that would be a little thing, but there was an aching need in the back of her throat. Suddenly she felt like singing.   
  
“Really?”, she raised an eyebrow and Sayaka turned a saccharine sweet smile her way. “Anything for a fan”.

  
Chihiro took the plunge, her voice was not ready used to sing loudly, but she did her best. At some point Sayaka joined her, her voice, stage trained, obscuring Chihiro’s own, something she was glad for. And having that private life performance, right in front of her eyes.   
  
It was almost better than the gentle touch of her lips against Sakaya’s. Chihiro’s eyes widened and she wondered if this was how Mondo felt when he kissed Ishimaru. She couldn’t believe what was happening.   
  
The private show had been great but this...this was better. As she had said, almost, but both were extraordinary.   
  
As Chihiro picked up the smartphone against her chest she couldn’t help but smile.

  
  
  



End file.
